


Sightless

by WerewolvesAreReal



Category: The Hidden Queen - Alma Alexander
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Genocide, Post-Bresse, sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-22 18:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18140021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WerewolvesAreReal/pseuds/WerewolvesAreReal
Summary: There is a girl and a dance, and then the night is over. Brem never meets Brynna again.She had gray eyes.





	Sightless

It's silly, but when Brem meets her he thinks about apples.

Brem's mother is Sighted, so he believes in a lot of things that other people consider superstition. When Brem was younger he sometimes sat in front of the fire for hours hoping to See, even though he is a boy, even though his eyes are coal-black like his father's. His mother would laugh and say, child, that will not help you See. You will end up blind.

But when he sees the girl – Brynna – Brem thinks he understands something of his mother's stories. His mother has always been frustratingly incapable of describing her gift. Sometimes she will say that Sight is like water, flowing through you and leaving soft traces behind. Sometimes she says it is like a dream, where you realize without understanding, and all logic is discarded for truth. And sometimes she says that Sight is power, and it is something that cannot be resisted.

Brem never understood. But as a child he liked watching his mother's clouded blue eyes stare over the fire, trying to imagine the things she could See. But it's not until he notices Brynna that he starts to understand.

She looks young and hesitant at first. She's pushed into the spinning dance by an older woman, and her initial steps are slow and uncertain. But then she starts to relax, speed up, and Brem can't look away. She doesn't quite know the patterns, but it's like her limbs are guided by a strange force. Like she's carried by wings. She smiles, and Brem feels his heart beat faster.

When Brem was nine he heard his sister talking with some of the patrons of the han, young women preparing for a marriage. They were arguing about superstitions. If you stick 18 pins into an apple, one said, you can put it under your pillow and dream the name of your love. No, said another; you should cup an apple seed and drop it, and wherever it points, that's where you must go to find your love. The last woman corrected that you have to _burn_ the apple seed, like an offering.

Brem's sister laughed at these ideas. But later Brem snuck away and tossed dozens of seeds in the fire. They smelled sweet and he made such a mess with the cores that his father scolded him, but he never had any sort of vision.

When Brem meets Brynna she is _important._ He knows that, though not why. He wants to talk to her.

Her eyes are cool and gray, restrained despite her smile and the dance's bright music. As they talk Brem sees her watching the musicians. Watching one of the fiddlers, the one that keeps making mistakes.

“He's been co-opted,” Brem explains. Brynna looks at him, startled. “He's not a regular member of the group, and they didn't have time to practice before tonight. But my mother just doesn't seem able to play anymore. Not since...”

Brem stops. She doesn't want to hear about this. It seems he can never avoid the subject for long, though.

Brynna takes one of his hands. Absurdly he can almost _smell_ apples, and hay, and somehow gold itself. Everything about her is golden and bright. Her hair cups her pale face like shining fire. “Your mother is ill?” she asks.

Brem clears his throat. “Yes – but, not just her. It's happened to all the women – all the Sighted women. There are three of them in the village. My mother... she just collapsed one day. They all did. My mother is walking now, but one of the others is still confined to bed. Everyone is worried...”

He stops.

Brynna has folded into herself, smile entirely gone. She drops her hand.

She's a visitor to the town. They've just met. Surely she doesn't want to hear about this.

Brem tries to apologize, to ask questions about her own life instead. She just looks at him with those guarded eyes and gives one-word answers. She doesn't want to dance, so he leaves for a cup of wine and returns to find her spot empty.

For some reason Brem finds himself searching the crowd for nearly an hour. But wherever she's fled, he can't find her. Brynna is gone.

* * *

 

They come for his mother eight days later.

She's still acting a little odd, Mother. But the village is a close community, and fiercely proud of their few Sighted woman. No one visiting the inn comments if she moves a little slowly, if she forgets their orders and has to ask again and again. She doesn't work much. Instead she sleeps, or spends hours staring out the window. Once Brem steps upstairs to fetch a forgotten bag and finds her crying in front of the hearth, heedless to his calls. But she recovers a few minutes later and pretends like nothing happened.

The smith's son enters the han mid-morning to say that there are soldiers in the square, asking questions. They need to talk to a Sighted woman.

Of course it's poor timing. None of the women in the village are healthy enough to heal someone, or cast fortunes, or whatever the men must want. But Brem shrugs and says to invite them in, and he fetches Mother. There's no harm in hearing them out, he thinks.

Except there is. There is.

When he brings Mother the soldiers grab them both and drag them out to the Square. The other Sighted women are brought too, followed by outraged relatives. One of the woman has to be dragged; she's never recovered from the mysterious illness.

An old officer stands at the front of a bristling line of men. He ignores the cries of the crowd, the shouting relatives, and for fear of their swords no one attacks. He stands in patient silence until the square falls quiet. It's like the build-up to a storm, and with deliberate movements he unrolls a piece of parchment.

“By order of the King, Sif Kir Hama,” he says, “There is no Sight in Roisinan.”

A soldier holds Brem down when they cut away his mother's eyes.

* * *

 

There are no explanations.

The army leaves as quick as they came. Brem's mother is ill again. She lies prone in front of the fire for hours. But she is lucky. She is. The sickly woman was killed outright; the third woman fought. She's hanging in a cage in the square, her body stuffed full of arrows. Her family was killed when they tried to fight.

And his mother is alive, weeping tears of blood in front of the fire and mute when they try to console her. Brem envied her gifts once, wishing he'd inherited her Sight. And now she will never See more than him. She will never see anything at all. And he grieves with her, missing both her gift and her beautiful light eyes.

And suddenly Brem finds himself thinking of someone else. Little Brynna at the dance, withdrawing when he spoke of Sighted women. Brynna with her curling hair and sea-gray eyes. Eyes like his mother's.

“Oh,” he says to no one.

The whole night his father and sister fuss over Mother. Brem sits apart from them and stares into the fire, but it's no use. He can't See what happened to Brynna.

And he never will.

 

 


End file.
